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Former students of Asian politics and international relations of a certain age (my age, or a bit older), would in college or graduate school have heard of, if not

English: President Barack Obama talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao during the morning plenary session of the G-20 Pittsburgh Summit at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

carefully read, China Crosses the Yalu: The Decision to Enter the Korean War, by Allen S. Whiting (1960). This was a seminal study of formal or--mainly--informal signals sent by China in 1950 warning with increasing clarity and vehemence the officially U.N. (but overwhelmingly U.S.) forces under command of Douglas MacArthur, then beating back North Korea invaders and advancing up the Korea peninsula, that China was prepared to and would intervene on behalf of North Korea if its territory or vital interests were threatened.

In the event, on October 25,1950, 25 days after U.N. forces had crossed the 38th parallel, 200,000 Chinese People’s Liberation Army (redesignated by Mao Zedong the People’s Volunteer Army) soldiers, having secretly crossed the Yalu River on October 19, attacked U.N. forces, beginning an engagement that would vastly increase casualties on both sides, but especially for the PLA. Whiting’s book sought to discern at what point China’s in many cases subtle and indirect warnings might have been heeded or responded so that intervention might have been avoided.

I have been reminded of China Crosses the Yalu as I have worked through the new book on the Senkaku/Diaoyu island crisis by Yabuki Susumu (矢吹晋), professor emeritus of Yokohama City University, one of Japan’s most eminent China scholars. The book (written in Japanese) is entitled:「尖閣問題の核心 」(The Core of the Senkaku Issue), and bears a subtitle:「日中関係はどうなる」 (What is to Become of Japan-China Relations). I believe that the book is the fairest and most objective, as well as the most thorough, exposition of the positions of both Japan and China, and--critically--the U.S., on the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands dispute.

At the risk of oversimplifying, I think I can summarize Professor Yabuki’s analysis and conclusions as follows:

The Japanese position on the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue is indefensible on several counts, including most fundamentally Japan’s unconditional acceptance of the terms of the Potsdam Declaration (which required the return of all territories “stolen” from China).

The Meiji government’s annexation of the Ryuku Islands (theretofore an autonomous kingdom) in January 1885, within which the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands were identified, followed three months later by the Qing Dynasty’s surrender of Taiwan and the Pescadores to Japan in the Treaty of Shimonoseki (ending the Sino-Japanese War) are both mooted by the terms of Potsdam. The islands were and are clearly part of Taiwan, which in addition has the most legitimate claim to continuous use/occupation.

The Japanese position that Senkaku/Diaoyu is part of Japanese territory because it was awarded to Japan by the U.S. in the Okinawa Reversion agreement of 1971 is similarly contrary to fact. The U.S. awarded to Japan only administrative authority over the islands, not sovereignty. Sovereignty was specifically not transferred. The U.S. continued to maintain was undetermined between the three claimants and would only be determined through discussion and agreement. (As I noted in the last post, the Obama administration--in a monumental blunder--effectively changed this policy by failing to object to and stop Japanese “nationalization.”)

Japanese policy--and particularly public misunderstanding--has been based on the false assertion, uttered by then foreign minister Fukuda Takeo in testimony to the Upper House of Diet on December 15, 1971 that Okinawa Reversion had accomplished the restoration of Japanese sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Whether Fukuda misunderstood the issue, or intended to deliberately deceive the country through this testimony is unclear.

The Chinese position on handling the territorial issue was, before Japanese “nationalization,” grounded on the 1972 agreement between Prime Minister Tanaka Kakue-Premier Zhou Enlai, when the terms of Japan-China diplomatic relations were determined, to “shelve” the issue--i.e., to avoid any acts that sought to enforce one side’s claim to sovereignty.

Yabuki cites his own research and authoritative third party sources to charge that the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs removed from official transcripts of the Tanaka-Zhou discussions that agreement to “shelve” the issue, allowing future Japanese governments to fraudulently claim that the issue was not discussed and that China asserted a claim over the islands.

Under the circumstances above, the decision of the Noda government to “nationalize” the islands was a grave provocation, a fundamental change in the status quo, tantamount from the Chinese point of view to aggression and forceful annexation of Chinese territory. An equivalently forceful Chinese response to “balance” the level of its sovereign claim was inevitable.

What has reminded me of Whiting’s study are the many signals sent by China since the beginning of the current crisis (which might be traced back to the fishing boat incidence in 2010). In December 2011 I posted on the humiliation meted out to PM Noda during a short, seemingly purposeless--and certainly fruitless--trip made to Beijing. Already, Japan-China relations had cooled to near freezing.

Professor Yabuki chronicles the many signals of trouble as Chinese concern over the direction of Japanese policy grew. These included the refusal of Hu Jintao in February in to meet a top level delegation of seven of Japan organizations’ heads in Beijing to commemorate the 40th anniversary of restoration of diplomatic relations. The last minute cancellations of a scheduled visit to Hu Deping, son of Japan’s last “sympathizer” in the Beijing leadership, Hu Yaobang, and a visit of China’s most senior uniformed military officer, Guo Boxiong, in May.

What concerns Yabuki most is that these signals, among many others, were hardly noticed or appreciated in Japan. Yet, they were leading to what became almost a complete breakdown in communications with China. The almost farcical, but deeply tragic, denouement of this breakdown was the “16 minute standing dialogue” between Hu Jintao and Noda held on the sidelines of the APEC conference in Vladivostok on September 9 at which each side delivered its ultimatum.

The Noda Cabinet decided the next day to implement nationalization and the following day paid the money and signed documentation. It is now very hard to believe that anyone expected Japan’s decision to have the effect of de-escalating the crisis. If anyone did they were making the same mistakes as Truman and MacArthur in 1950.